k50dude, Jamesrules90 - correct that isn't the boiling temperature of water. the temperature listed is the surface temperature, and likely the water is not as hot..and thanks for being curious about such a curious world!

I have never seen such destruction. Maybe it seems much worse, much larger, more epic because of the alien moonlight that lit our first view of this massive world. But everything here is larger. The star Alnilam is so much larger and brighter than our Sun that it causes life to be much greater in size. The average tree here is no shorter than 100'. Giant trees of green and purple.

This world, much like our own, is its own universe. We have spent the last week exploring and searching for more answers. I cannot get the image of the giant obelisk city out of my mind. The narrow grid of alien streets connecting the network of obelisk architecture, scorched black and stained with blood. The eerie pyramid that mirrors our own at Teotihuacán, and the towering central obelisk, worn and broken. When I looked upward at the shattered top of the obelisk, I feared I was foreseeing the future of our own Washington.

View of "Pyramid of Alnilam" from Central Obelisk grounds, Obelisk City

Like the worlds we have already witnessed, there is no one to be found anywhere. Yet, even amidst the decay, we have still glimpsed the wondrous beauty of this place. We found an untouched residence overlooking a sea...a survivor of what happened here. Perhaps this is too much to share, but I longed for a woman to be beside me, looking out into that vast alien ocean. I can still recall the black and white movies from the 1940s I saw in the museums as a kid...the leading man and his lady, standing on the deck of the ship, looking out into the moonlit waves.

Alnilam rises over Alnilam 4

We encountered more bones than we did life, and have brought some truly exotic looking creatures back on board. We also found conceptual renderings of pyramid and obelisk development. The sky in the renderings were deep blue, not the blue-green sky that envelops this world. Perhaps these are the renderings of something once planned for Earth, or another world similar to ours. Yet the greatest thing of all is what appears to be an aerial photo of our own world, taken when these visitors came and built these structures. Words cannot begin to describe.

Aerial photo of Ancient Egypt, ~10,000 B.C.

From here we leave for Mintaka. I will hope for closure there. So will my eyes.